pierogie season starts this weekend

The season for summer church and nationality festivals, all of which seem to feature home-made Polish and Slovak food, starts this weekend with Ambridge Nationality Days. There will be over 100 vendors, crafts booths, ethnic entertainment, and the Pierogie Challenge, which seeks to find the best pierogies in Ambridge. I love festivals, small towns, and pierogies, so I can't wait!

Photo from Ambridge Nationality Days website.

palindrome curb appeal

Our house hasn't had house numbers since we moved in--all we've had are decals on our mailbox. So last year Dave and I looked at every possible website we could find for house numbers. The numbers I liked best were the Neutra numbers from Design Within Reach, originally designed by architect Richard Neutra for mid-century buildings he designed. But at $50 a pop, we just couldn't stomach spending $150+ on house numbers. So we did nothing.

Recently, while at Home Depot, we found numbers very similar to the Neutra numbers, complete with the floating aspect that gives them a shadow. And they were $5 a number! Dave installed them this weekend. Here they are in the daylight and at night underneath our outside light. And yes, I love that our house number is a palindrome :)

vegan shoes at pavement

I wanted comfortable but also cool shoes to wear for both work and sightseeing in Prague, so yesterday I headed to the store with the coolest shoes in Pittsburgh, Pavement in Lawrenceville. Last year I bought my first pair of J-41s from Pavement--made of recycled rubber and other materials from the Jeep company, they're 100% vegan and so comfortable that I wore them everywhere.

I left Pavement with three new pairs of J-41s! Two are funky but comfy heels I can wear for work (one is pictured here), and the other are a different version of the J-41s I bought last year--perfect for walking a lot and sightseeing. And they were all on sale, so I got three pairs for what it would have cost me to get two pairs from Zappos.I hadn't seen Alissa, the owner, since I left Lawrenceville last summer, so it was good to catch up with her. She said three new restaurants are coming to Lawrenceville soon, right in her area of Lower Lawrenceville: Sufak's is becoming a Mexican cantina, an asian fusion restaurant is opening up (finally--they were supposed to open back when I worked there), and a coffee shop is going in just a few doors down. Exciting!

Pavement also has a lot of really cute clothes and accessories. If you want really cute and funky shoes and clothes that no one else has, be sure to check out Pavement--definitely my all-time favorite shoe store! (Note that their website is down right now, but they're at 3629 Butler Street; 412-621-6400.)

new york magazine says come to pgh!

Pittsburgh's arts scene is in New York Magazine's travel section as a suggested weekend escape. I have to admit that seeing things like this (of course Lawrenceville is mentioned!) makes me miss my old job. Even now, I can't help but shout this out here, on Twitter, etc. I guess promoting Pittsburgh is in my blood!

Earlier this week, my friend Pam D., who I worked with in Lawrenceville, was in town and organized a fun happy hour with an equally fun group of ladies. It was wonderful seeing Pam (she had me in stitches all night) and it was good to talk to others from Lawrenceville. They told me I'm missed :( I miss them too! I once told Pam I loved how she described the job on her LinkedIn account: The toughest job I've ever loved. True 'dat!

Just one more thing about the article though--I love how they give a nod to Pittsburghese though they didn't get it quite right...yinzers come in all ages! "The Pittsburgh accent and unique turns of phrase are derived from early Scotch-Irish immigrants and still used by older residents, known as “yinzers.”"

hard to believe this happens

This week I watched an episode on PBS's Frontline called Sex Slaves about sex trafficking. The documentary was filmed in Eastern Europe (women from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Hungary were trafficked into Istanbul, Turkey) but this practice is a multimillion dollar global industry.

It can start with women answering classified ads for waitresses, maids, and other legitimate jobs but, more often, someone who knows the women will tell them they can make money in another country. The documentary followed a trafficker named Olga who promised women domestic jobs in Instabul for $200 weekly pay. Some of the women did in fact get the legitimate jobs they were promised. Olga took others across the border, met up with men who paid for the women (in one instance $1,000), and told the women to go with the men, that they'd be fine. The women were then taken to an apartment (in one story, 22 girls lived in a three-bedroom apartment) and beaten and raped by the traffickers before being told they needed to work as prostitutes in order to pay off their debt. The women were raped 24 hours a day by customers, often between 10 and 25 men a night. They were also beaten regularly, at least once a day. After some time of this, the women were often sold to other traffickers, making it impossible for them to repay their debt.

That this is a common practice that happens regularly today is both frightening and heartbreaking. But, what's even worse, is that there's so little help or even empathy for these women. When traffickers are caught and charged, they often serve no jail time. Olga, the trafficker that the Frontline producers filmed trafficking women three years ago when the documentary first aired, was never arrested and is still living in Moldova.

Still feeling a little sick to my stomach thinking of this, I logged on to the local news today to see two back-to-back headlines: one about a puppy found killed and burned and another about a cat killed with an arrow. Sex trafficking and animal abuse are two different issues, I know, but underlying both is depravity, cruelty, and evil that is hard to imagine existing in so many people today.

But, it does.

Image from PBS's website.

simple fruit salad

Years ago my friend Jill made this fruit salad for a summer dinner at her house. I've been making it ever since. The ingredients couldn't be more simple--watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, and grapes--but it keeps for a week in the fridge and is delicious and refreshing.

joey's trees

Last night we went to the opening reception for Tree, a photo exhibit by Joey Kennedy at the office of Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest on Penn Avenue that was part of the monthly Unblurred art crawl. Joey's photos were amazing--and of course, I loved the tree focus! The space was cool too. The wood floors were made by a local woodworker. Here's what their site says: "Our new office floor was made by John Metzler, a local Pittsburgh woodworker at Urban Tree Forge right in Highland Park. John gives new life to trees that have been removed in the City of Pittsburgh, turning them into furniture, sculpture, flooring, and other functional wood products. Friends is proud to feature completely local flooring and to put salvaged wood to use." Also in their office was a cool sculpture made from a tree, and what I think were teeny baby seedling trees. Their site has lots of good tips and resources for tree care, so check it out. Joey's photos will be on display through the end of August, so stop by to see them if you're in the neighborhood.